Last weekend, my wife and I took a trip up to Newport, Rhode Island, to spend some time at the beach.
We got some sun, we ate some seafood, we drank some pretty terrible local beer, and we visited one of my favorite landmarks: The Music Box.
I’ve essentially made a trip to the Music Box once every summer since I was about 14, and though it has expanded its reach beyond music and video over the course of the last decade-and-a-half (if you notice on the store’s official website, they also sell sports memorabilia and “gourmet food”), it remains a good old-fashioned record store at its heart.
I almost always go in looking for a handful of specific things—for no other reason than tradition, I always pick up a copy of the new Warped Tour compilation, as I have been buying those things since they’ve been called Punk-O-Rama; this time around, I was on the hunt for the Flaming Lips’ Heady Nuggs, a limited-edition Record Store Day collection of the group’s first five Warner Bros. albums on vinyl—and also for some browsing: Whenever I visit a new city, I always try to seek out a used record store to dig out soundtrack compilations from ’90s teen movies, which I constantly purchase on the cheap for reasons I’ve lost track of.
The Music Box did not disappoint (though they were playing Train’s cover of “Umbrella” on their in-store sound system, which bummed me out profoundly). I walked out with the Lips set (at a fantastic price) and a promotional compilation of Lollapalooza performers from 1994, which includes tracks by Green Day, L7, Nick Cave, Stereolab, and the Breeders.
But the most thrilling moment of the afternoon was completely unexpected. READ FULL STORY »
